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Good Advice: SmithGroupJJR Helps the Advisory Board Company Expand

A fast-growing health-care and education consultancy, the Advisory Board Company in Austin, Texas, was tripling in size, to 47,000 square feet—courtesy of a move that supplied SmithGroupJJR a perfect opportunity for interior reinvention. The original location's private offices, counterintuitive for a team-based organization, gave way to "neighborhoods" for each group. Separating these clusters of benching stations are break-out areas and phone rooms. The latter and interview rooms are among the few enclosed spaces. If an interview requires further confidentiality, curtains in a print by Charles and Ray Eames can be quickly pulled across. Curtains also figure prominently in the lunchroom. Eschewing a café cliché, SmithGroupJJR envisioned a "family room," a pantry accompanied by lounge-friendly upholstered banquettes and Arne Jacobsen chairs and stools. The pantry island is clad in reclaimed Texas longleaf pine—the material through-line that simultaneously unifies and demarcates.